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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901665">The Trail</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med'>Lyssandra_Med</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Woods [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Dark Fairy Tale, Dark Hermione Granger, F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:53:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,226</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22901665</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyssandra_Med/pseuds/Lyssandra_Med</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting lost is easy. Finding a way out is impossible.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Woods [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646152</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>83</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. These Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tekturna/gifts">Tekturna</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>a two shot prequel to "The Woods." Takes place an unspecified time before.</p><p>Unedited</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The older townsfolk had rituals surrounding their lives and the moments that interconnected with their younger generations. The older townsfolk told tall tales to their young; children swaddled and toddlers rumbling around before bedtime, little boys and little girls and everything and everyone in between.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was (or at least it seemed,) to be the one thing that each and every villager could agree on. They told all of their stories in much the same way that they passed on information for a better future. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Their</span>
  </em>
  <span> future, if not specifically their children’s. The adults held to </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> opinion. Those of their brood too young to work had a differing thought on the matter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stories were just that, ever and always.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Stories.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Tales that were meant to frighten the young children into obedient complacency. Wicked horrors meant to bring willful boys back home before dark. Lullabies meant to soothe babes and veiled wisdom meant to keep them all toeing at a line that demarcated proper behaviour from lecherous activity. The stories that they found hidden between leather bindings and dried on old parchment were better. The stories that they told one another late at night with a bottle of stolen wine in an effort to frighten and outlast their peers were </span>
  <em>
    <span>better.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But regardless of how much each and every child attempted to deny it, those who managed to grow up within that tiny little village could feel the faintest grains of truth hidden beneath their elder’s words. All those little warnings and drawn out morals were meant for </span>
  <em>
    <span>something.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Blood and murder and disease; all the many things that could snatch them up from beneath the disquieting comfort of darkness. Truths dressed up in robes dark and red, whispers meant to startle and frighten them, rumours to send them fleeing back beneath the safety of a warm quilt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The adults knew </span>
  <em>
    <span>truth.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Or a version of it, at the least. They knew the reality and the forgery and all the sordid little bits and pieces that coalesced into a </span>
  <em>
    <span>whole</span>
  </em>
  <span>. All the anger and the blood that led to the beginning, even as it led them back to the end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione had never been one to put much stock in her parent’s honeyed words or fanciful tales. The fables of witches and monsters and Gods hiding behind the cover of the Moon hadn’t startled her so much as they had intrigued her. In the end she had sat still and listened devoutly as they revealed the horrible escapades of witches long sent packing into the brush, of monsters made from those who blasphemed their Gods and spat on the richness of the earth. She had never thought long and hard on the pitiable glances they would give to one another as they relayed that information.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Had never considered the truth behind their tone, or the reasons for </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> their eyes would drop low to the ground when the wind began to bang against the shutters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woods surrounding their little village and the single road out were dangerous. She knew it. There were bears and wolves and stinging, biting insects that sought to burrow beneath her skin. She knew it. She knew she could become lost at a moments notice, or fall down upon a faerie ring and never see the light of day again. She knew that she could fall down, alone and quiet while her bones snapped and cracked in little holes dug up by vermin and outcast alike.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione knew the woods were dangerous. The howls outside her windows, the braying of phantom dogs late into the night, the drifting and mournful cries of those lost and damned who screamed for a release that could only become a cold wind blowing against her shutters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione knew the world outside was dangerous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And yet…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It did not delay her action. It did not obfuscate her own truths. She wanted knowledge, craved it even, and while she always held herself with careful poise she pushed those boundaries around her until </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> gave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione had a desire for her own stories. No matter the difficulty, no matter the trials, no matter the </span>
  <em>
    <span>pain.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end, the story she wove wasn’t quite exactly what had been passed down to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Finding herself lost deep within the thick mass of the woods wasn’t a very hard task to accomplish. To that end, Hermione managed it quite by accident.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione might have been of age now at twenty-one years old, and she may have even held more collected knowledge than ten of her so-called friends, but even then she was not immune to stumbling off the edge of the map. Stumbling - </span>
  <em>
    <span>just this once, </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>only</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> once</span>
  </em>
  <span> - off the path in search of something interesting. Interesting being butterflies. Interesting being their pretty blue wings and the soft flutter against her fingertips as she reached out to pluck one from the air. The insects moved with little effort yet escaped her regardless of how fast or agile she assumed herself to be, and it was with little thought or effort that Hermione stepped off of the beaten path and into the forest proper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Soft grass atop soft soil. Soft leaves that brushed against her ankles, her arms, soft branches slipping away for her to pass. The woods here were tame and gentle and even if one mistook their embrace for that of a lover, they were not exactly wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione, in her haste and mild loss of reasoning, never noticed just how far she strayed. Reality, however, was never one to be ignored for long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Soon enough her roughly spun shirt and thick jeans made from hemp were covered and littered by bramble and petals alike. The butterfly had, once again, remained </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> too far away for her to catch. A minute or two at most since she had started, certainly no more and quite likely even less, but in the space that insect had climbed higher and higher until even the tips of her fingers were too far away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Too high for her to reach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When it flew away for the last time and off towards the heights of the canopy that encased her, Hermione stopped and looked around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Noticed that the weaving mass of ferns and elms and oaks had shrouded her from wherever she had entered. Noticed that there was no trail to lead her back, nor any evidence that she had come from one direction or the other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her heartbeat spiked while her hands began to shiver, mouth turning sour with the taste of </span>
  <em>
    <span>raw</span>
  </em>
  <span> air, </span>
  <em>
    <span>raw</span>
  </em>
  <span> dirt, </span>
  <em>
    <span>raw</span>
  </em>
  <span> fear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione wandered and dove through bush and brush alike in an effort to find her way back. Looked up high at the sliver of the sky that she could still see through the canopy and attempted to follow the faintest glimmer of the Sun. A minute, two, maybe perhaps even three at the most. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sprint that she had slid into slowed back to a crawl. Terror did not grip her. Fear did not set her veins alight or spiral her down into a panic. But </span>
  <em>
    <span>worry</span>
  </em>
  <span> kept her moving. She remembered those tales, those stories and their fears, and while she consciously knew that she could not have wandered very far away, Hermione also knew that this was a forest with no end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She wandered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nightfall managed to bring with it a chill that ate at Hermione’s skin. Along for the ride came the first few thoughts and halting realizations that this would not be so simple of an escape as she had been hoping. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nightfall brought </span>
  <em>
    <span>danger.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione wasn’t quite certain just how far she had walked. She had learned along with her siblings and her cousins how to tell the distance by the number of paces she had taken, but after her rather uncouth sprint earlier on, she had no idea just how far she had truly come. She knew that the sun had begun to set what seemed like hours ago. She knew it had disappeared what seemed like only just a minute prior. She knew she should be </span>
  <em>
    <span>frightened</span>
  </em>
  <span> but as of yet she was simply </span>
  <em>
    <span>worried.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The stinging nettles had been biting into her skin and clothes, the bits of brambles and rocks had been destroying and scuffing at her thin leather boots, and the curls of her hair were nigh infested with little seeds and nettles that had been torn apart in her travel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her legs were </span>
  <em>
    <span>burning</span>
  </em>
  <span> with exhaustion despite the will to leave and the longer that she forced herself to move the worse it grew. Luckily for her, it seemed the effort was leading her somewhere at least. High above her in the sky lay a star as bright and fat as they came. The Warrior, her mother had called it, a burning ember high above her and only barely visible through the shaking boughs and leaves. The Moon was barely visible as well, and only as a sliver of its normal self. It was bright enough however that she managed to evade most of the pitfalls that had been strewn and placed around the forest floor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But still she worried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Worried and worried until every little sound grew louder in her mind. Worried and worried until every abrupt shift of the air was a monster breathing down her beck, and every flicker in the distance the eyes of some unseen predator.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She barely managed to stop herself for long enough to catch a breath. She could not tell how long she had been under this spell of fright, nor could she tell how much time had passed since darkness first claimed her. The world around her spun and spun, her lungs burning and feet aching and so many </span>
  <em>
    <span>worries</span>
  </em>
  <span> lodged into the forefront of her mind. But bit by excruciating bit, Hermione clawed back the desperation in a bid to reveal whatever sanity lay beneath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t work. Not totally, at least. But it was just enough of a recentering that she could cease the tremor edging through her body and close off the mounting fright that sought to cloud her judgement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione gathered herself again and followed the Star.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>By the time that Hermione managed to catch sight of the faintest glimmer of light ahead of her she was near enough to passing out that the sparkle seemed to double and triple as she stumbled towards it. By the time she grew half as close, she could pick out the faintest hues of red and orange ascending somewhere near the horizon as night retreated in place of the coming dawn. The forest was thinner here, wherever </span>
  <em>
    <span>here</span>
  </em>
  <span> was, and Hermione took the increase to her sight as the boon that it was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She </span>
  <em>
    <span>ran</span>
  </em>
  <span> towards the source of the shimmering light. She sped across the ground while slapping tree limbs out of her way, driving her feet as hard as she could while only just barely managing to stumble past rocks and roots, panting and wild-eyed as she-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She lost her balance at the last moment. Foot arching down to catch itself beneath the twisting loop of a root that had sprung up from nowhere. Face and body crashing down to earth as she slid into a clearing. She didn’t manage to get much of a look as she arced forward towards the dirt, but what she </span>
  <em>
    <span>could</span>
  </em>
  <span> see seemed to be too good to be true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A cabin on the cleared ground with a cart by its side and smoke rising upwards from a small chimney.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Exhaustion blanketed every portion of her mind as she smacked down into weeds and grass.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Darkness settled in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione awoke with the faintest glimpse of the world revealing to her a pattern of grey and brown blanketing her eyes. She could feel at soothing intervals the comforting warmth of a quilt laid down atop her body and the scratchy closed off fabric of a mattress stuffed with straw. She noted distantly that her head hurt and seemed to have been stuffed full of a foggy confusion buffering a haze of memories.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could recall that she had become lost sometime the day before, and she could remember having gone off the path to chase and hunt after wonders that only led her to flee from imagined terrors. Beyond that? Almost nothing. But she found herself comfortable where she was, or at least so close that she could call it that and not feel annoyed at a lie. No part of her </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt</span>
  </em>
  <span> so much as it </span>
  <em>
    <span>ached </span>
  </em>
  <span>and even though Hermione found that she could not properly recall the exact manner of the injuries she had sustained she was certain nonetheless that it had been far worse than how she currently felt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Stinging nettles buried deeply within her skin. A patchwork of bruises upon her limbs from all the moments she had sprinted sidelong into trees and stones. The few annoying spots where rocks and stronger sticks had bitten through her shoes to prod at the arching of her heels.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could barely remember that last ungraceful tumble as she made her way into the clearing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of the pain was gone and all of it reduced into a faintly numb ache that managed to leave her more confused than frightened at her situation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was more certain however on the whereabouts of her body. Certainly this was not her home nor were these her blankets and bed. She could reason however that if she had fallen in at the edge of the town’s property that she might have been dragged off to a healer somewhere else within the village. It stood to reason that her aches had come from who knew how long a time spent recovering with the care of someone trained to deal with injuries and maladies brought about by-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, you’re awake then, are you? It’s about time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione startled into a jerking motion when the words reached out from close beside her and no more than an arms-length away. The tone was foreign to her ears. Lilting in a way that she wasn’t quite used to but that sounded </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> familiar enough that it felt like the speaker was from somewhere in the village. A woman at least, Hermione could tell that almost immediately by the gravely husk that left her straining to hear more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her eyes peeked open further as she pushed herself through the haze of an unfocused glare to track whoever it was that had spoken. A mass of black hair greeted her vision, wavering and moving side to side as the speaker wandered closer still. Hermione raised a hand to rub away the sand and grit accumulated in the corners of her eyes until she could properly view her mysterious saviour.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Short, at least by Hermione’s reckoning. Not that it counted for much here where she had no proper items to compare against. The woman’s height was buoyed somewhat by a mass of darkened curls that sought to spill out down her shoulders in a race to reach the bottom, a single lock of grey marring the otherwise lustrous appearance. Pale skin, thin and milky in a manner that seemed primed to reflect back what little light that passed in through the shuttered windows that Hermione noticed scattered about in odd intervals. Red lips that seemed to </span>
  <em>
    <span>pop</span>
  </em>
  <span> the longer that Hermione stared, a colour and freshness that reminded her so much of last years harvest of strawberries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And eyes that stared down at her through twin pits of black with no white to speak of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione blanched, the blood draining from her face and body growing stiff as she lay there in sudden rapturous terror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She fainted not long after.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>---</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Hermione woke again there was a very distinct lack of comfort to the action. She rolled herself side to side only to find herself strapped atop of what seemed to be a rather rickety chair with cords of rope looped around her wrists and ankles to keep her tightly to the structure. Her head, however, was free and her hair pulled back into a roughly assembled ponytail that left curled fraying bits wafting against the midpoint of her neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now then. Are you going to have another episode?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The voice spoke up this time from somewhere behind her and close enough that Hermione could feel the faint tickle of breath puffing against her neck. She nodded in answer to the question, untrusting of her voice and unsure of what the response would be should she stumble or make the wrong sound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quickly she recalled what she had seen, reviewed it within her mind. Surely her vision had been mistaken. It was obviously just a trick of the light or a holdover from having passed out so swiftly. And surely she was in no actual danger, not after this mysterious woman had seen fit to heal her and leave her unencumbered within the bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione rolled her wrists beneath the scratchy hemp of the rope, aware that whatever hospitality had existed before seemed to have completely run dry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good, good. Now, why don’t we start on something easy, hmm? What’s your name, little Pet?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>‘Little? </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>Pet?!”</em>
  </b>
</p><p>
  <span>Hermione bristled at the informality of the accusation. She was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> little. She was a newly minted adult in their village, and more than ready to begin an apprenticeship or start a life of her own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nor was she someone’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>pet.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Her irritation coloured her tone as she replied, “Hermione Dagworth, and I’m not little. Now, who are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’d watch your tone if I were you, Pet.” The voice bristled right back at her, all the fine hairs along Hermione’s neck standing to attention, “If it weren’t for me you’d still find yourself out back as food for creatures who have much less patience than I.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. That </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span> make some sort of sense. In an odd way, that was. Who was she to throw anything back in the face of whoever it was that had-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait- No, sorry- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Creature?!”</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Darkness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>unedited, might add another in-between portion later.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Bellatrix forced herself to push through the tempting smell of her guest and forced herself back towards the opposite corner of her home. Twice now she had come far closer than she had felt comfortable to destroying the little invader. Three times now she had found herself salivating whenever her mind wandered, eyes blank and body stretched taut. She couldn’t even count the number of times her mind had drifted towards the rack of knives she kept along the backside of her cot, nor could she number the moments she had stilled with hands poised above the woman’s throat and rituals on her mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She’d found </span>
  <em>
    <span>Another.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One very much like her, and yet not. One with just the faintest sparkling of ability but absolutely no training, no knowledge at all. And now she was trapped; the Gods she had blasphemed seemed poised to strike her low again, leaving her with a temptation that was almost too good to pass up. The girl was stuck here, in her home, on her land within the ever-flowing reaches of the Forest. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had tried to leave the night before. Had followed the setting Sun and the directions </span>
  <em>
    <span>she</span>
  </em>
  <span> had given out.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione had reappeared within twenty-four hours. Stumbled blindly from the Forest in just as lost and broken of a state as her first arrival. The Forest demanded a sacrifice and it appeared that there would be no satisfaction, no release until it had been carried out. The need for the action to be completed by </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> hand was unsaid; all the bones within her yard spoke to that just as well as the gnawing pit of her stomach. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bellatrix plotted and wondered if there was another way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione fumed and fought against the Gods to leave.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What should have cleanly been a simple journey from one point to the next became a roundabout exercise in madness. All Hermione’s actions mirrored the many tales she had been told as a small child still afraid of the dark. Here she was, lost within the woods and finding insanity instead of reason.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lost. She was well and truly</span>
  <em>
    <span> stuck</span>
  </em>
  <span> within the evergreens and their attendant oaks, the grass beneath her smoothing over trails until nothing was behind and all of it before her. Which led her back to Bellatrix, in turn, and all the uncomfortable truths that the woman possessed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Witches. Demons. Monsters made from flesh, made from bone, monsters cursed to wander the world alone and unafraid of any form of death. Beauty that left Hermione in such a roiling headspace that there was nothing at all for her to do except wander away within the Forest until it sent her back. The Gods below must have planned this, she knew it. It certainly wasn’t her fault that the jailer she had been assigned was just as beautiful as Hermione could ever imagine. Nor was it her fault that Bellatrix hid her darker aspects and her history with such a tight grip that every hour that passed left her growing closer and closer to grabbing the woman’s shoulders.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe she could shake an answer out of her that way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not that it would help.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Three weeks meandered by before Hermione even noticed. Time shifting with the effortless grace of the woods, passing in the blink of an eye. Meals held in separate corners of the small shack, Bellatrix gnawing on bones as she fought through the desire to harm her long term guest. Patience was lost, bit by bit. She could not </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt</span>
  </em>
  <span> the little creature, could not break her bones or strip flesh from muscle. She couldn’t even bash the pretty little thing against the floor before draining away whatever might remain of her fraying sanity. Bellatrix’s shack had better ideas.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Gods wanted </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> to happen. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her inner nature suffered, called out for a release she knew would be denied. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the shack knew her desire. It knew her wants and her needs, and slowly her prison began to fulfil that small request.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The changes were almost unnoticeable at first. Small moments where the scent of man would fade into coals and embers and burnt pine. Moments where her ears seemed to deceive her, stretches where Bellatrix could barely notice the faintest glow of a darker voice. Unbidden and unwanted moments where she could feel a slickness settle between her legs and a heat long-abandoned flare to life in the pit of her abdomen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The need arose naturally. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione had kept herself fed on small things she could steal from the Forest. Squirrels and birds and fish from the nearby steam became her daily bounty. Bellatrix cared not for what the girl would seek out. At least until she noticed a rather abrupt change in Hermione’s temperament towards sustenance.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No more fish.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One day Hermione went out-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The next she came stumbling back-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No fish. A rabbit lay clutched between her fingers and blood fell down to mar the left portion of her body. Her clothes were dripping with red ichor, the material slack and stiff and beholden to a breeze now that the evidence of her hunt had nearly congealed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bellatrix knew what was happening. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She could hardly contain her excitement.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione was nearing her wit’s end. Bellatrix had slowly become an object of mind-bending mysteries that left her more confused than ever before, aching deeply somewhere she could not name. The woman so rarely spoke to her, so rarely moved to open up, and even as she worked to make things or hunt, Hermione was left behind in the dark.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A haunch of rabbit cooked rare and dripping with fat tinged red from blood. Cold water skimmed out from a barrel kept upright out back. Dried jerky from a hunt who knew how many nights ago. Small meals. Meagre, even. But it was enough to let her sit back as Bellatrix shimmered and shivered, fading and wavering beneath the thinnest veneer of humanity.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What are you,” she asked, again expecting nothing more than a simple shrug or cold rejection.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bellatrix would not talk to her. Hadn’t talked, hadn’t interacted except to leave her door open and a bed set up from Hermione to crawl into whenever the day wore long and thin. The clothes she had been wearing were more scraps now, just rags better suited to wrapping around her feet than keeping on her shoulders.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Bellatrix wore nothing at all. Or, alternatively, she would wear so little that it mattered not. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A shapely body filled out tight with muscles hid beneath pale expanses of flesh. The evidence of scars and battles were upon her in lancing grooves both natural and man-made. Raking slashes of some creature or another mixed in with spots and brands that Hermione could have sworn were words.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was a tapestry that Bellatrix seemed content to leave a secret.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unfortunately for Hermione the secret needed to be explained, eventually. The reasons for </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span> were numerous; her exclusion in the Forest was a maddening half-truth, the manner in which it twisted and gathered time to stretch longer the more that she remained sedentary was another. More than the questions raised by the Forest, Hermione needed answers once the cravings started in earnest. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She had always enjoyed good food. Bellatrix hardly seemed to partake in cooking, even going so far as to completely ignore the perfectly fine utensils that Hermione found shoved away within a drawer. Bellatrix ate things raw. Bellatrix ate things that would twist Hermione’s stomach as she watched the woman devour red meat and still warm blood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But her tastes changed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hard muscle. Deer and squirrel and rabbit; all the little creatures that she never would have thought to trap or kill were slowly being gathered and brought together at the edges of the property. None of it seemed to sate her growing hunger. Just the day prior she had hung strips of venison to dry and smoke.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now she couldn’t stop herself from tearing into the meat the moment skin was peeled away. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One minute she was staring at a pile of still twitching meat. The next she was on her knees with hands wrapped around what might have been a shoulder. Teeth slicing through the fibery material as though it were just as soft as butter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mind empty. Thoughts gone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She came back into herself with a full stomach and hands that shook the more she tried to control them. Blood dripped down her face, down her chest and the hollows of her throat. Bellatrix stared back at her from the safety of the shack.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A smile painted on her face. Knowing, yet not speaking.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione had screamed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No one had heard.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Winter came to the Forest. It was slow, at least a half a year slow by Hermione’s reckoning of time. Though if she were honest she would admit that she could not be quite sure of that fact. The hours and days had sloughed together after the first month. There was nothing to orient herself and nothing to hold onto. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>What she knew was that Bellatrix was inhuman. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slowly, bit by agonizing bit, Hermione knew she wasn’t quite human either.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The woods surrounding them both would still not let her leave. Circuitous routes would send her back towards the shack at any available moment. It kept her occupied to a degree, those looping trails and pitfalls. Nothing changed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Case in point seemed to be a large stream that ran along the northern edge of the land, just far out enough that she could traverse the Forest and not find herself sent back. At one point it had been a flowing river, the evidence of deep cuts led towards that fact. But it was still now and nearly placid. Unmoving except to trickle from one end towards the other. But it was clean and fresh, and just barely deep enough for her to wash away the grime that accumulated on her body now that she had no proper clothing left to wear.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It wasn’t much. Her developing strangeness had brought with it a heat that seemed to fill her bones and while the stream was not perfect it was enough for her to relax within and find a moment of refreshing coolness. Blood drifted off of her in streams. Blood dried fast, simmered down into stains of red that smelled richly of iron and copper. Blood stuck to her hair and twisted lengths into curls all tangled and matted. Blood stained her lips and all her thoughts with it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione hated it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione hated that she loved it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She hated Bellatrix for remaining silent. She hated Bellatrix for allowing whatever unnatural design was being completed. She hated whatever was happening to her body and the twisting magic that left her burning, left her writhing atop the grass with ecstasy and horror in equal measure.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She loved the abject pleasure that came from biting into flesh. She loved it when her lungs filled deep with the most wonderous cents that she had never before imagined. She loved it for the strength that built throughout her muscles, the crack of bones beneath her fingers and the hours she could run beneath the canopy of the Forest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The water was calm. The face staring up at her was dark. Tanned skin, black eyes, fangs that gleamed within her mouth. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She didn’t scream.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>---</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s just a curse,” Bellatrix offered her one morning, her voice quiet and subdued. Hands slowly ceased the constant grinding of a mortar and pestle, tools left to lay atop her bench as she turned towards where Hermione lay sprawled out on the grass. Her hair was splayed into a halo all around her and fingers were dug deep into the ground. She fought in fits and starts to halt the tremble in her limbs, to cease the heat that poured out through her core.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione watched with flitting eyes as Bellatrix wandered closer with the faintest line of a smile blossoming on her face.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I cursed a God.” Bellatrix stopped and looked all around her, “He cursed me back. We don’t have a name-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione snarled at the woman’s words, anger colouring her vision as she stared at the creature who had become her jailer, “I don’t care. Just make it stop.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s no stopping it girl,” Bellatrix snarled back, moving to stand above Hermione with feet planted stubbornly on either side of her hips. She lowered herself slowly and with purpose, “There is no end to this. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span> wandered in here, </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> had something hidden deep within you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> called to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hermione stifled the mewl that threatened to bubble up from her throat when Bellatrix finally sat flush against her. Wet heat poured out from between her thighs, a slickness coating her and tingling where centre met the flushed skin beneath Hermione’s navel. Strong nails dug themselves into the meat and flesh of her shoulder as Bellatrix bent closer still, dark eyes impenetrable and lips twisted into a grimace of her own. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dark hair blocked out the world around her. Dark eyes sucked her in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When you’re done changing we can leave,” Bellatrix whispered, soft and sibilant and more a whisper than anything else.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And when is that?”</span>
</p>
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